Tuesday, December 20, 2005

The Kline Record: Kline's Floor Speeches

Since I have some spare time on my hands, and since John Kline doesn't appear to be doing much that's newsworthy these days, I thought I would browse through the Congressional Record to find out what issues Mr. Kline thought important enough to bring to his colleagues' attention on the floor of the House during the roughly three years he's been in Congress. It's impossible to link to the Congressional Record; bits of it get served up for a short amount of time so one can read them, then they disappear again. So I thought I would use the free hosting space Blogger is giving me to establish a permanent record of John Kline's floor speeches.

At least, until I get bored browsing the Congressional Record.

On February 11, 2003, freshman congressman John Kline gave his very first speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, 208 words honoring Ronald Reagan's birthday!

Mr. Speaker, twenty-two years ago, as a young major of Marines, I had the high honor of serving President Reagan as his military aide. On inauguration day in 1981, this great man started immediately to improve the morale and pride of the armed forces. He had real admiration and respect for Americans in uniform, and real concerns about the status of our military forces in that troubling decade following the war in Vietnam. It seems impossible now, but in those years we were not permitted to wear the military uniform, unless by exception, in our nation's capital--a sad indicator of the state to which pride and confidence had fallen.

During his first inaugural parade, President Reagan told each of the service chiefs that it was time for a change. He told them he wanted to see more uniforms on the street. He knew that this change of direction and attitude was important not only to those wearing the uniforms, but to all Americans. The time of shame and remorse was over. We owe a great debt to this great man for many, many reasons. But, perhaps the first reason is his remarkable transformation of our armed forces.

Thank you, Mr. President and Happy Birthday!

This speech was followed the very next day by a 182-word speech honoring Texas Congressman Sam Johnson, which was too banal to republish even here. Same goes for the 218-word speech he gave in support of our troops the day after we invaded Iraq.

But five days later, freshman congressman Kline got his legs under him and introduced his first legislation, which will be the subject of the next post.